In the field of object and material classification, an object classifier has generally been used to classify an object type from among a plurality of candidate object types. For example, an image of an object may be used to classify an object type by referring to a training set of object images. Additionally, a material classifier has generally been used to classify an unknown material into one of multiple material types. A material classifier may generally be based on an observed physical property used to differentiate different material types.
The Perceptual Sciences Group at Massachusetts Institute of Technology developed an image database for studying human material categorization, known as the Flickr Material Database (FMD). Attempts to improve on object and/or material classification utilizing the FMD have been made.